Buy Article:

Abstract:

The productive services of nature, such as the ability of fertile soil to grow crops, receive low market prices not because markets fail but because many natural resources, such as good cropland, are abundant relative to effective demand. Even when one pays nothing for a service such
as that the wind provides in pollinating crops, this is its 'correct' market price if the supply is adequate and free. The paper argues that ecological services are either too 'lumpy' to price in incremental units (for example, climatic systems), priced competitively, or too cheap to meter.
The paper considers counter-examples and objections.

Environmental Values is an international peer-reviewed journal that brings together contributions from philosophy, economics, politics, sociology, geography, anthropology, ecology and other disciplines, which relate to the present and future environment of human beings and other species. In doing so we aim to clarify the relationship between practical policy issues and more fundamental underlying principles or assumptions.